


What The Fire Gave Us

by lushthemagicdragon



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Disabled Character, Eventual Happy Ending, Gaslighting, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Past Abuse, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, This is going to get very dark very fast, dealing with caleb's trauma, probably, this would be H/C if either of them were good at comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-10-14 19:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20606144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lushthemagicdragon/pseuds/lushthemagicdragon
Summary: Five years have passed in Wildmount since the end of the war, and Caleb Widogast hasn't been seen since Trent Ikithon died at his hand.The monsters that make us have a terrible habit of finishing the job. Sometimes, all that can undo the damage is the right person putting in the time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to ~flammablehat for being a great beta and cheerleader! Let's get this longfic show on the road.

To study time and all of its facets is to understand that the word itself, _time_, means nothing and everything at once. Time passes slowly, it moves quickly, it behaves both in a linear fashion and, simultaneously, bends in on itself and reinvents its own rules. Time is relative; the Time of a wizard is not the same as the Time of a merchant, or of a farmer, or of the birds in the sky and the worms in the earth. To understand time and what time _truly_ means is to exist in it, and to feel one’s way through the threads as they pass in and out of view for eternity.

Time moves differently in small farming towns like Alfield than it does in capital cities. In Rhosona, in Rexxentrum, and even in Zadash with it’s bustling population, the war that ended five years prior was still a living, breathing entity. Politics continued on with treaties, debates, ambassadors and the endless rumor mill of the well-to-do. What was once daily updates on the war from the criers on the street turned into a weekly occurrence, but the war itself had only just come to an end. Five years, in the centre of the political world, was no time at all.

Five years for the people of Alfield, for the people of Felderwin, for the people of Trostenwald passed differently. War came quickly through the countrysides of both Xhorhas and the Dwendalian Empire. It poisoned the ground, set fire to the houses and the livelihoods within, mobilised citizens and armies alike. War rode through their towns and settled in their lives until the fighting was done. The gears of Hupperdook ground to a halt, the soldiers and mercenaries throughout the lands returned to their homes and life continued as it always had. Time moved slowly again, unbothered by the particularities of political life.

The market in Alfield was not particularly special, all things considered. Other towns could claim great crafts or spectacular harvest. Those towns were not Alfield. This particular farming town had, until the passing through of a band of vagabonds soon to be notorious heroes of whatever version of the war one’s perspective on time chose to favor, been notable only for having a rather large invading Gnoll population. All that the all-around average market of Alfield could claim for itself was country character and charm. Children who had experienced neither gnolls nor the war that swept through ran under stalls and away from their guardians. The spring air brought pollen under the noses of farmers at their stalls, and a chicken narrowly avoided running underfoot of a stranger in town. Five years was a long time in Alfield, and the flow of strangers with the war had dwindled back to its regular sporadic trickle. This one seemed kindly enough, armed only with a satchel and a polite smile. Human and unimposing, with soft blonde hair and sun-pricked skin. He bought some apples and a sweet bun, tucking them away into a small sack that cost him an extra copper. He gave two for the trouble.

“Daneel--Daneel are you listening? The wizard, the one who was with the Saviors, you remember him, don’t you?”

The elderly halfling who ran this particular stand prodded her middle aged son who lay against the nearest post, snoring. He woke with a start from the slap that followed.

“Mm--wha’?”

“The wizard, Daneel, from the Saviors. The ones who rescued Herma. How long ago was it that he was last in town?”

“Must’ve been just after the war so...five years ago maybe? Four?” Daneel rubbed his eyes with a wide yawn, before fixing his gaze on the unassuming figure with his sack of apples and a sweet bun in hand. “You may need to ask Watchmaster Bryce though, they’re friendly with that whole bunch. I think I’ve seen the rest of them come through a few times since, but not him.”

The stranger smiled again in thanks, and continued on. He would have moved onto the next stall had one of the children he had so dexterously sidestepped earlier not reached up to grab at his satchel.

“Can I help you?” The little girl who stood no taller than the stranger’s knees wouldn’t have been able to recognise his accent if she were the same age as her mother, nor the age of her grandmother. She only knew that it was different, foreign to her ears.

“Can you keep a secret?”

The stranger smiled.

“Yes.”

She crooked her finger, motioning for him to lower himself to her level. He didn’t crouch or squat to meet her eyes. He merely leaned forwards in interest.

“I know where the wizard is, but you can’t tell anyone.” She whispered in that uniquely loud way that children whisper. “Do you promise?”

“You have my word, I won’t tell a soul.”

As if his word had been a key to an enchanted lock, the girl’s eyes brightened and her smile opened wide into a toothy grin. She told the stranger everything that she knew about the wizard, and stories poured out from friends her age. They were rumors and tales among the children. One of them had almost died trying to steal from his garden. Some of them thought he would eat them, some thought the grown ups didn’t talk about him at all because he was cursed. He was old, he was sad, he was scary, he wasn’t real, of course he was real. Time moved slowly in Alfield; among the youngest villagers the past had already turned to legend.

There was a cottage at the end of the woods, she told the stranger. She had never been that far from the village but she knew. Children watched, they listened, they always knew. He left her with the sweet bun, and she watched him deftly drop the sack of apples behind a nearby cart. His feet didn’t make a sound when they hit the ground. When she had grabbed for his satchel to get his attention she had grasped only air. No one would believe her, but she knew.

*

”Hi Essek! Are you busy tonight? You should come over! My mama sent me some sweets you might like! I’ve got something really important to--”

Jester’s spell took him by surprise every time, and that would remain Essek’s little secret for eternity if he had it his way. She had grown somewhat more considerate with her timing as of late, though he attributed that to the regular daylight beyond Rhosona’s city limits. It was a daylight he had grown used to living in the Empire’s capital city, though sunglasses and remaining mostly indoors had done little to change his opinion of it. On this occasion, Essek’s hand jerked at the sudden ringing in his ears. He lifted his pen quickly enough to not ruin the letter he had been writing: another update to the Council of Dens as to the status of trade negotiations. After five pages of a thorough and detailed account regarding the inner workings of the Empire’s many interested breweries, only a small scratch of ink could be seen where his penmanship had faltered. He sighed, returning his pen to it’s case as he responded.

Jester Lavorre’s hair had grown past her shoulders over the last five years. It sat thick against her shoulder in a braid laced elegantly with green ribbon throughout the plaiting. She fiddled with her ends, the nervous habit of someone well taught not to pick at her threads. She smiled down at Essek from her balcony when she noticed him, bright and welcoming in everything she did. Were he a weaker man he would envy her that. Were he less keen he would think it was purely genuine and not a distraction from her own worries. Jester wore her emotions like the luminescent paints on her fingertips; her bare, straight-forward honesty startled him once, but time, for how quickly it moved in the lives of diplomats, had made her most stark trait a comfort in it’s own way.

Jester had barely touched the rose-flavoured gelatine treats that her mother had sent. That was as sure a sign as any that Jester had something quite serious on her mind. That would have been reason enough for Essek to watch in wait for whatever she had called him to her home for. The rest of her nervous, concerned, ticking tells only confirmed what he already knew.

Essek floated a delight to his plate out of courtesy, the less saccharine sweet still a bit much for his savory palate. Ten minutes into a story about her new dress and he finally took a bite. Twenty minutes in he had finished his tea, and poured himself another cup from the pot. Thirty minutes and two separate digressions passed before he interrupted.

“Jester.”

“Yeth?” In that second of interruption, Jester had taken the opportunity to take a large bite from a custard tart.

“As fascinating as this story about your seamstress is, I believe it is time to get to the point, don’t you?”

“Essek...”

Ignoring the pout that formed on Jester’s lips was easy, and the teapot floated over to fill Jester’s half-empty cup as well. “You’re nervous about something. Care to tell me what that is?”

The tension returned to Jester’s jaw and the crease between her eyebrows. He could see her hand twitch as if she wanted to play with the ends of her hair again, or with the hem of the tablecloth her mother had sent her from their home beside the sea. It’s the little things that make a person who they are, those little actions and inactions lost to the stream. It was those little actions that determined, by the former Shadowhand’s estimation, what to expect.

“Okay fine, fine I’ll tell you. You’re no fun sometimes you know?”

“So I’ve been told.”

She took a deep breath, braced herself, and Essek waited.

“Well...you know how I know where Caleb’s been hiding out and you don’t, even though you two were being suuuuper cute before everything went really bad? I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, you know, because we’re friends now! And it’s been a really long time now since everything happened. You’ve done so much for us, and for the Empire, and for Xhorhas, and Caleb isn’t…” Jester caught her bottom lip with her teeth and worried it like the end of the sentence she couldn’t finish. Caleb isn’t a lot of things, Essek resisted the urge to add. Caleb isn’t a damsel in need of defending. Caleb isn’t in any danger from him. Caleb isn’t his top priority. Caleb isn’t here.

Jester picked at the corner of a rose-flavored delight, Caleb’s absence heavy in the silence.

“If I told you where Caleb was, would you go to him?”

*

A circle of stones in the shape of a wall delineated where the woods ended and the cottage began. To any casual passerby, the home would seem long abandoned. Vines grew and tangled across the way in, a natural nest for spiders a more potent deterrent than any rusted gate. Weeds took root in between uncared-for cracked ground, cobbles missing from the path that led to the boarded over and weathered door. The vines that tangled across the wall crept up the side of the cottage as if the years had given nature permission to reclaim it, covering some faded mural that had long ago been painted across the side. The stranger had shimmered and become Essek once again far enough from the property, but now that he stood before what he knew to be an illusion, the thought crept into his mind that he had best leave the place alone. An eerie discomfort crept into his stomach, and Essek couldn’t help but smile.

A variant on a suggestion spell, clever.

It would take time to dispel every safeguard that Caleb had put upon his self-imposed prison, but time Essek had. His fingers traced symbols and pathways in the air and spell after spell glowed and fizzled out of existence under his ministrations. Some to trap him, some to distract, and one particularly tricky one to start with that would have prevented him from attempting any magic at all had he not understood the concept of range. This was a puzzle, and Essek wondered if Caleb was watching him solve it through his familiar’s eyes just past the boundary of the illusion. He wondered if Caleb would see through those eyes that Essek was enjoying himself. He wondered if Caleb still remembered after five years what Essek’s face looked like whenever Caleb challenged him, and how much he enjoyed it.

Caleb prided himself on his memory. Perhaps he could recall those fragments of possibility as well.

As the last offensive spell was dispelled, Essek couldn’t help but be a bit smug about it. Caleb Widogast, for all that he had learned and become a truly powerful mage, was still human, still subject to the mere handful of years he had lived. He could challenge the former Shadowhand, could make him manipulate his luck on spells that he had activated instead of dispelled, but the student remained the student nonetheless, and the teacher remained proud of his pupil’s work. Essek knew that crossing the thin wire that lay barely visible under the illusory foliage would alert Caleb to his arrival. He passed over it with the confidence of one wanting to be known. With his own feet hovering inches above the ground he didn’t need to side step the sigil trap that sat comfortably within range, and the spiders that didn’t exist took no notice as he passed through the illusory gate.

The trap he did miss went off the moment he passed through the illusion. Flame and light burst in his periphery, pulling his focus with the sound and heat. A quick counterspell could eliminate the threat to his person, but could not account for an arrow bolt released into his leg, and another immediately after.

Essek sighed deeply at the sight of two arrows lodged in his body beneath the knee, shaking his head with impressed amusement at the folly of his own pride. He couldn’t feel the arrows, grateful in the moment that his legs hadn’t felt very much at all in the last hundred years. Still, a lesson well learned. Even _he_ could get complacent and be taken by surprise. His face was still hot from the flames, his head beginning to ache from the ringing in his ears, but he should have expected as much from Caleb, of all people. Caleb, who burned his bridges with a completionist fury. Caleb, who put as much fire into setting a distraction for a practical trap as he did into achieving catharsis for his turmoil.

But the catharsis had not been achieved at all, even when Trent Ikathon’s body burned, and that was why they were here, now, with five years between them and the remnants of progress.

Caleb could run laps around even Essek with the strength of his memory, but Essek did not forget so easily when walking (so to speak) directly into the belly of the existential beast.

Even with the building tension behind his eyes and the momentary tightness of his muscles from the localised explosion, Essek could appreciate what the cottage actually was beyond the limits of the illusion. The garden, while indeed full of weeds, was also green and alive. The cobbles could all be counted up to the door, which was unbarred and unweathered by time and disuse. A clothesline hung from the roof to a post; Essek recognised the tunic that hung from it but not the rest. Unfamiliar clothes that seemed to lack the personal touches he had come to be familiar with when mentally cataloguing Caleb’s Xhorhassian dress. Pops of colour and personality that Essek had come to associate with Caleb seemed absent from the clothesline. The mural on the side of the cottage, no longer faded and crumbled but still half covered by the creeping of vines, was of Jester’s hand. The paint, the garden, the wind chime of shells and red rope that hung outside the door all spoke to personalities that did not live here in this bubble of isolation.

Essek has dispelled the only traces of the Caleb he had known and grown quite fond of against his better judgement. All that remained were clothes of no particular character or interest hanging on a line and the lingering smell of smoke from a wood-burning fire inside.

He knew better than to touch the door as he approached. A quick examination told him everything he needed to know: if he were to open that door, the spell attached would not open onto the interior from which Caleb was surely watching through the eyes of a hidden familiar, but onto somewhere else entirely. He traced the air in front of the door like the spine of a book that would shudder and open to the correct page. Another spell to dispel, if he could focus through the building pressure behind his eyes he attributed to the ringing in his ears. The muscles in his neck were sore from it, warm from the heat; he would need to have words with Caleb about the level of intensity once they were speaking again, and once he assessed the situation fully. He clenched and unclenched his fingers, ready to turn his attention back to the spell when his entire body froze.

The resonant echo of Caleb that had cast Hold Person upon him disappeared from Essek’s peripheral vision in a puff of dunematic shadow. Essek would smile if he could. As it was he would need to wait until Caleb deigned to show his face and release him from the thing. Waiting he could do.

What Essek couldn’t do was catch himself inches from the ground when the headache behind his eyes filled his vision and he all but passed out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Caleb and Essek meet again for the first time in five years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More thanks to @flammablehat for being my excellent beta and cheerleader. This chapter dives right into some dark stuff so take the archive warning update seriously. 
> 
> As a note, I'm being intentionally vague about exactly what work Essek is doing Rexxentrum because I don't want it to go too wildly AU from canon and what I have in mind predicts an ending to Campaign 2. We'll see if I elaborate on that bit of history but it's not extremely important for the story. 
> 
> Lots of questions will be answered but maybe not right away.

Bren had always approached any task put in front of him with an unparalleled focus. If his mother asked him to peel and slice the potatoes for their dinner he would pay full attention to the placement of the eyes with their slivers and buds of roots. He would slide the knife underneath the skin at an angle that would strip the flesh while removing the least amount of meat from below. He would take the point of that knife and carve out the eyes until none remained, and cut slices that were just the right width to fry nicely in his mother’s pan. Each was perfectly cut so that they would cook evenly throughout and no slice would be wasted in being burnt for the sake of the others.

His mother knew that he was talented, but took far too long in the kitchen.

Bren approached his studies at the Academy and under Ikithon in that house outside the city in a similar manner. Focus came naturally to him, with a deep-seated need to see the results of his efforts realised perfectly. Bren would bury himself in his books and read with such a dedication to absorbing the words that he would forget to eat. He would miss that the sun had set through the windows of the library until Eodwulf came to find him. Under Ikithon’s direct attention, Bren would grind his teeth and not feel the tears pricking at his eyes while he focused entirely on the magic in his veins. The only thing worth thinking about was the sliver of residuum slid underneath his skin and the magic that followed his pulse down from his arms to his fingertips and tingled with potential. He focused because it mattered; being the very best he could be under Ikithon’s eyes was all that mattered.

The illusion of heroism burnt and crumbled to the ground with the timbers of his family home. The warmth that came from knowing that he would make his betters proud was subsumed by the fire entirely. From the shattered wreckage of his own wellbeing that focus metamorphosed. The caterpillar of potential, of drive, of the desire to be his very best self metamorphosied in his madness and emerged hypervigilant.

Real fights, the kind that can decimate any group of adventurers, do more damage than can be seen on the skin. They shatter eardrums, rupture organs, cause levels of internal bleeding stemmed only by the hand of a healer. To know a healer is to forget that death and injury go hand in hand. Caleb could barely hear out of one ear by the time the end of it came; the ringing from his inner ear felt distant, as if reaching him through water. The sound of his own feet against the floor and Beauregard shouting his name in the distance were lost entirely to the sight at the end of his vision. None of the rest of it mattered; not the pounding of his pulse, not the blood seeping through and darkening the rich purple of his coat, not the twinge that necrotic damage sent down his arm into his fingers. He was blinkered and blind to the rest of the world around him, focused fully on Trent Ikithon lying prostrate on the ground.

Caleb had gone over what he would do in this situation hundreds of times in his head. 492 times to be exact. He went over it repeatedly until he had concocted for himself the perfect recipe for catharsis. He wouldn’t kill Ikithon. Not right away at least, and not quickly. Control spells were plentiful in a wizard’s arsenal, and his lessons in dunemancy had come to great use in helping him to modify one to his needs. Caleb would keep Ikithon alive long enough to see his own hands undo his life’s work, with no control over his own body. He would keep Trent Ikithon conscious and awake behind his eyes until killing him would be a mercy.

The Nein were behind him, but there had been no discussion. He hadn’t asked their opinions or for any input. He had simply stated his plan down to the bullet points and asked for their support. Telling them had never been about their approval. As far as he was concerned he had lost that the moment he suggested anything beyond being a bigger person; letting him live by Caduceus’ standards, or killing him quickly just to get it done by Beau’s. There was nothing that any of the Nein could have done or said to change his mind on the matter. If he wasn’t going to have their approval, he could hope for their support at best.

The plan had been meticulous, but none of it mattered with Ikithon there in front of Caleb, weakly trying to push himself up off the ground. He seemed so much older to Caleb’s eyes then, even older than the many years that had passed since he saw his former master. The sallow of his skin as he dragged himself along the floor, liver spots that Caleb could see through Ikithon’s thinning hair, the yellowing of his nails that went white from the pressure needed to pry himself further. He seemed so weak, struggling through the necrotic damage, the burns, the arrows to his side, just hanging on enough to escape.

Caleb could let him escape. It would be a mercy Ikithon hadn’t earned.

Ikithon needed to crawl far enough away that he would have the time to use the last of his energy to teleport away, and perhaps in the throes of a desperate mind it seemed possible; that he would somehow find that time between his broken crawl and the steady incoming steps of his approaching end.

(Any sound that Caleb could hear came to him as if through water, and his feet too, felt heavy in the presence of a Moment. A great Moment, a terrible Moment, one that he had waited for and that he dreaded with equal tension. He couldn’t run if he tried, he could only walk towards it.)

Ikithon crawled, and while time seemed to move at a snail's pace inside Caleb’s mind he was stepping on Ikithon’s hand and kicking him onto his back in the time it took for Fjord to hold Nott back from interfering. Ikithon’s maw had too many teeth for how incredibly _old_ he seemed on the ground, broken, defeated, and weak. It smiled up at Caleb and laughed, as if the disgust in Ikithon’s bloodshot eyes had no say in the matter. The laugh wheezed air from Ikithon’s struggling lungs; Caleb would cringe at the sound of it if he felt he was in his own body and not hovering slightly above it, detached, floating.

“_Bren_, I am impressed,” The blood between Ikithon’s teeth caught Caleb’s focus with more sharpness than his eyes, those empty, disgusted eyes, that bore into him like beetles. “I’ll admit, I underestimated how far you would have come without my guidance, and as broken as you were.”

Caleb didn’t respond, only stared between those teeth, across the wrinkles in his cheeks, up around his ears, anywhere but his eyes.

“Look at you Bren, you’ve grown into a man in your absence, and one better fit to fight than the rest of your schoolmates.”

Caleb’s fingers twitched, threatening to ball into fists. Ikithon’s elbow’s shook with his weight as he tried to prop himself upwards from the ground. Caleb watched his adams apple as he swallowed, the collection of skin under his chin, the undeniably human bits of a monster. He should do it, cast his spell and seal Trent Ikithon’s fate. Caleb shouldn’t waste any time when he didn’t know for sure if Ikithon had anything left to throw at him. He would do it if it were not for the air that felt thick around him and the feeling of being outside of himself, attached to his limbs by strings. He would but for what sounded like the ramblings of a dying old man.

“The rest never had your natural talent of course, no. Eodwulf the least, he barely got by at all without you. And Astrid…”

“_Don’t._” The words spat out of him like bile, and he could feel those eyes on him, he could see them in the periphery of his own. “Don’t mention her, don’t mention either of them.”

“Look me in the eyes when I’m speaking to you, Bren, give me the dignity.” The cloying vagaries of Trent Ikithon sharpened like Caleb’s hyperfocus, a demand that may as well have had magic behind it. Caleb always hated eyes, hated looking right into them but he was looking into Trent’s because he told him to, without thought or control over his own instincts. It was so easy to get lost in eyes like Ikithon’s that held you in place with their absolute lack of any definitive emotion, left you searching for answers and some sort of resolution to the question that all eye contact is supposed to answer: where do we stand, are we understood?

A younger, weaker version of Caleb would have gotten lost trying to find his footing, would have been distracted enough to miss the quick motion of fingers in his periphery as Trent Ikithon tried to cast a teleportation spell. Whatever it was Caleb threw up a counterspell of his own and dropped down to the ground to put himself down to Ikithon’s level. The weight of it was heavy on his knee; it would leave a bruise but it was nothing at all like the feeling of suffocation that came from being in Ikithon’s presence. There was that eye contact again, that anchor into a void of nothing that crinkled at the corners as he just wheezed another laugh.

“You are truly a specimen, I could not have made you better myself. I can admit when I’ve been outdone, though to admit to being outdone by the Crick, that _is_ tough on my pride.”

Caleb’s voice was quiet when he spoke, only loud enough to fill the space between them. “You weren’t outdone by them, you were outdone by me. I did this.”

“Yes, you did.” The old, broken, powerful man could speak quietly too, with the steadiness of a surgeon at work, “Are you going to kill me, Bren?” It took only a second's hesitation for Ikithon to fill in the silence. “You should of course, you’ve won. Are you going to make it quick like I taught you or make me suffer as they did?”

“What…”

_Don’t stumble on your words, speak clearly_. Caleb can hear the snap of Ikithon’s words in his head as if he were speaking them now.

“Your clothes, Bren, look at you. And the _dunemancy_ they lured you in with, did you think I hadn’t noticed? The stink of them is all over you.” Ikithon’s thin lips curled into a smile as he watched Caleb’s expression, watched his gears turn and his jaw clench. “It seems that you didn’t notice them pulling your strings. It must only be dawning on you now that you traded in one master for another, you fool. You always did have a weak spine; you did much better with a guiding hand behind you. If it wasn’t mine it was always going to be somebody else’s....but _look at you._”

Ikithon’s limp, weak hand flicked in the direction of Caleb’s, his muscles clenched and holding a flame he hadn’t realised he had summoned. It burned hot in his hand, hotter than anything.

“I’m old and you’ve won, it wouldn’t take much at all to end me and yet, here you are. You’re ready to kill me in just the way that I taught you. In the way that worked best for _you_. Is this what you’ve been dreaming of, Bren? This moment to raze your past to the ground for your future potential? You’ve done it before, albeit with unsatisfactory results, but you’re a man now, not a boy. I’m sure that you could actually do it this time. Just like I taught you.”

Caleb couldn’t hear his friends squabbling behind him, couldn’t hear anything but Ikithon _talking_ and the blood pounding in his ears. He couldn’t feel the bruise forming on his knee or damage he had taken in the fight. He could only feel the fire in his hand and tears pricking at his eyes and dripping down his face without his permission. He could only feel his body acting, detached from himself, and Trent Ikithon continued on.

“I only wish that you had been strong enough when you were a child to bear the burden of your actualisation. If you had, you would have learned how to shut off every feeling that you’re going to feel when you kill me. You’re the same boy as you always were Bren, without a spine to hold yourself up and you’re going to feel it all again. If you had only stuck with it, then you would have learned how to do it. You need to feel nothing to survive in this world. It is a shame that you’re doomed to repeat this whole cycle again until you do.”

“Stop--”

“I’m proud of you Bren, I hope you know that deep in your heart. Just as your family was proud of you, and these companions of yours will be too. Or are you going to choke again, Ermendrud--”

The moments we want to remember sometimes happen too quickly. They pass us by in their immediacy. Caleb had wanted to remember that moment in its exactitude, with every detail in place for his own catharsis. He had wanted it to happen in his own time, in his own way, not slogged through the mud and then at a speed to catch up with existing time. He barely registered the beginning of motions by Ikithon’s fingers, nor the eldritch blast that went off barely a meter from their faces that pulled him back into hyperfocus. There was only the awareness of space, of time, and how quickly he set his former master aflame before his friends dragged him bodily away from the fire he wanted to consume them both entirely.

*

The sound of birds and the heavy smell of Iodine stirred Essek into wakefulness, and quickly. He had never lived an adventurer’s life. He moved from comfortable bed in the home of his birth mother to comfortable bed in the house of his Den Mother, then on to his own comfortable bed designed to his exact specifications for his private residence. Even the bedroom of the last five years in Rexxentrum carried with his unique taste, from the style of his bedsheets to the smell of fresh Jasmine he had planted beneath his balcony wafting in through his window as a replacement for his Xhorhassian local favorites. He never lived a life of discomfort, and the difference was noticeable upon waking. He lay there as if still asleep, assessing where he was and why he was not, as he would expect, in his own bed, when memory filled in the gaps.

The house in the woods. Caleb’s many traps disarmed, and one sprung. Dizziness, and then the collapse.

Caleb had successfully managed to catch him off guard. There was something that Essek found charming about that. By all logic he shouldn’t be charmed at the idea that he missed a trap; were this anyone else he might have died in the process, and he had never been sloppy enough to risk death so far from the Luxon. Caleb always did find a way to surprise him, that much hadn’t changed.

Essek listened in his false sleep to the sound of pages turning in a book in an even but quick pattern. A four legged animal jumped up onto the hard surface on which he currently lay. The cat, for it was most definitely a cat, stepped closer until Essek could feel it breathing on his face.

“Cats can always tell when someone is awake, there’s no use pretending that you’re not.”

Caleb’s voice sounded rough to Essek’s ears, like it hadn’t gotten much use as of late, like it stuck in the back of his throat at a certain volume that wasn’t limited to the ears of cats. When Essek opened his eyes and let the world come back into focus, he saw that Caleb looked no better than he sounded. There was a sallow, unhealthy quality to him that one would expect from time in a dungeon, not a home in the woods with a garden. He had let his beard grow in, let it become a scraggly mess of a thing that barely hid how thin he had let himself become, how unkempt, how disinterested in his own upkeep he now was. He carried in the hunch of his shoulders and the shadows under his eyes years of abandon, the weight of it was palpable even while he closed the book in his hands and left it on his table.

How had Caleb been the last time that Essek saw him, before he disappeared? Not like this, though a haunted, hunted look filled his eyes then too. It was more urgent then, when he arrived in Rexxentrum only to meet the tails of Caleb’s coat as he turned to leave in a hurry.

He remembered the moment when Caleb walked out of his life vividly; he had thought about it enough in the years since. He could barely see in the daylight without his dark-tinted spectacles, and the shade of the Inn where the Nein had been staying was a welcome relief. He lowered his spectacles from his eyes expecting some degree of a warm welcome but was met only with a bare room and a bag packed at Caleb’s feet. Cobalt Soul blue and not packed by him, but there it sat like a promise of disappointment. Caleb was fidgeting with his fingers then, hunched and and waiting by the door. He would have left already had Essek not kept him waiting, and Essek wondered at the time how long had he been waiting like that? Hours? Days? For the weeks between the news of Essek’s assignment to Rexxentrum and his arrival? He knew now how long but it didn’t matter, it didn’t make the moment any less tense to recall.

_”We shouldn’t see each other again.”_

_“We shouldn’t, or we won’t?”_

_“You know the answer to that.”_

Caleb had looked his handsome self then, if not a little harrowed from what stress he chose not to share. That Caleb seemed distant from the reality in front of him. This Caleb avoided meeting Essek’s eyes as he sat up on the bench where he had been laid in his unconscious state. Five years in his life was no time at all, and the regression from a more comfortable point in their relationship stung. Making eye contact seemed a pointless task, and Essek took the time to examine the source of that iodine smell. Caleb had opted to cut open his pant leg instead of stripping him down, which was a decency appreciated despite the cost of repair.

“An arrow trap when I was distracted by spells. Very clever.”

“That was ah, Nott’s contribution.”

“You two worked well together.”

Caleb’s mouth twisted with something he wanted to say but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, the way it always did when he was being self deprecating. He stood to put the book away on the overflowing shelf with stacks at its side. It went into a specific place, each book where it belonged in Caleb’s life.

“If you’re awake then the antidote worked, and you don’t need to wait for the wound to heal because you don’t walk. I would like you to leave.”

Essek’s smile was tight in response and didn’t reach the eyes that Caleb refused to meet.

_”I see.”_

_“I mean you no disrespect.” _

_“I had hoped to see one friendly face amongst the suspicious masses, so you can imagine that this is not the welcome I expected.”_

_“Fjord will be able to help you settle in, no doubt Jester already has plans but I...I’m going away. For good, I think.” _

_“And an explanation? I am owed at least that.” _

_“Essek...I’m sorry. I have to go.”_

“I’ve come a long way looking for you. Consider allowing me to rest here for the night repaying a favor. If I remember correctly you still owe me two.”

Essek knew Caleb well enough to know when he was being watched, if only from the periphery of the other wizard’s indirect glance. He was being observed like a threat, as he manually moved his legs over the edge of the bench. With no response from Caleb, Essek continued.

“I have no intention of staying in an inn when I can stay in the home of a friend. We are still friends, are we not?”

Caleb could avoid meeting Essek’s eyes, but he could not avoid being watched in return, directly and intently. Essek watched Caleb like he watched everyone, with attentive impassivity. Each stare was as much a challenge as it was a statement of disinterest. Caleb said nothing, but grimaced under Essek’s attention. He furtively glanced back in Essek’s direction, under the line of his sight, before he turned around and headed out through the front of the house.

Essek watched Caleb leave and released a sigh when he was gone. He summoned the nearest chair to him and by the time Caleb returned, had sat himself quite comfortably on it, tucked into the table. He thought that he would be waiting there for some time, observing his surroundings and considering what to do next, while Caleb collected himself the best he could outside or even waited for Essek to put himself to bed for the night. What he didn’t expect was a handful of dried foliage and a pot of water set to boil under a summoned flame. Essek watched Caleb’s shoulder blades jut out under his shirt as he pressed too hard while grinding the leaves and buds, and as he checked the temperature of the water with his pinkie, as perhaps his mother or a friend had taught him once before.

Essek didn’t know anything about Caleb’s mother, or where he came from aside from his history with the Academy. He hadn’t asked; he hadn’t had the time to ask. He had barely mentioned his own outside of having been adopted into a Den, and Caleb’s discomfort with the topic of family had been evident enough. It hadn’t been important, all things considered, but was nonetheless another point of consideration when asking himself if they had ever really been friends.

Caleb shoved the bits of leaf, petal and bud into a ceramic teapot with a cat on it, collecting his mug and shuffling around for a second one before he found it and blew out the dust. The tea pot and two mugs joined Essek at the table, the fresh mug dropping down in front of Essek and the dusty one in front of Caleb. Caleb watched the tea pot and Essek could all but hear him counting the seconds until the tea had brewed. Frumpkin curled up in Caleb’s lap, and there was silence in Caleb’s corner of the world. Essek could be patient, and he waited with his fingers laced. Caleb’s lips moved in miniscule fractions when he neared the end of his count in a way that Essek still found charming even now, when the bitterness of being so flippantly rejected had gone through its cycle into resigned ambivalence.

He didn’t expect resigned ambivalence to tug at the corner of his lip and threaten a smile at Caleb’s unique quirks.

“I’m sure you’re wondering who told me where to find you.” Essek finally spoke up, his fingers wrapped around the mug that Caleb had just filled.

“It was Jester or Beauregard.”

“Jester. Beauregard and I don’t speak socially, and Jester, as I’m sure you can imagine, won’t stop speaking to me socially, no matter how much I ask.” Essek took note that the furrow in Caleb’s brow deepened at the mention of Beauregard, but didn’t pry. He only watched Caleb’s fingers tense and relax, tense and relax on the mug of tea in his hands.

“You find Jester grating, and yet you held out for five years, three months and twelve days to get this information.”

“Her personality has...grown on me. Believe it or not, I now consider her a friend. I stopped waiting for someone to tell me where you were a long time ago, Widogast. I had more important things to worry about.”

Caleb made a sound in the back of his throat, one that could either have been an acknowledgement or scepticism. Knowing Caleb, it could very well have been both.

“Why did you come then? You knew I wanted to be alone, and you have more important things to be worried about.”

“I was asked to.”

“And that’s all.”

“I’m still owed the dignity of an explanation, and you know how I feel about debts being paid.”

Caleb’s eyes snapped up to Essek’s like to an anchor point. As met Essek’s eyes for the first time that evening, wild and only half focused, Essek could see what Caleb was hiding behind the ambivalence: fear. In an instant the connection was broken, and Caleb’s chair scraped against the stone floor as Frumpkin hopped to the floor and he stood up.

“I am alone because I want to be alone. You speak of dignity, and I ask for the same. Consider it another debt in your arsenal, please leave in the morning.”

Caleb quickly left up the stairs and shut the door to the room at the top of them. After a moment, the door locked, and Frumpkin made himself comfortable at the very top of them. Frumpkin curled up into himself and watched Essek over his paws. Essek didn’t watch the cat back. He sat alone at the table that took up most of Caleb’s ground floor, and sipped his tea. Caleb’s mug sat untouched across from him, as full as when it has been poured. It got cold as the sun went down.


End file.
